10 questions with ‘Schools for Misrule’ author Walter Olson

9. If you were to recommend three books that law students should read, what would those be?

Every entering law student should read a book on how the workings of the law can ruin innocent persons’ lives, such as Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters’ “Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria.” And one on the boredom, frustration and burnout that beset so many lawyers in big-firm practice; I’m not sure a classic book has appeared on this yet, perhaps because the potential authors are still caught up in 16-hour days trying to pay off their student loans. On the ideological issues, Steven Teles did a very fine book two years ago called “The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement,” which is quite illuminating about the left side of the legal spectrum as well as the right.

10. What are the three books that have most shaped your worldview?

Kind of an unanswerable question. I do tend to gravitate toward tales of how vast ambitious schemes of uplift make life miserable for their planned beneficiaries. That category would include Edward Banfield’s “The Unheavenly City,” Jane Jacobs’ “Death and Life of Great American Cities,” Charles Murray’s “Losing Ground,” and maybe Daniel Okrent’s new book on Prohibition (“Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition“), which I haven’t read yet